Clockwork Melody
by Kaleidoscope Glass
Summary: The issue with being a god tier in a failed session is that one cannot die. The sweet embrace of oblivion is denied to those who have failed. /For the Horrorterrors whisper even to those of light./ TW: Suicide.


**A/N: TW: Suicide.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Homestuck.**

* * *

John woke up dirty, confused, and covered with blood.

He pushed himself off of the checkered ground with trembling arms. Straightening up, he pushed his matted hair out of his eyes. When John brought his hand back down, there was a smear of blood on his fingers. It was then that he decided that he should look around and see where the _hell _he was. John glanced around the Battlefield, then took a closer look.

There was nothing but blood. Corpses and carnage and blood.

He began to tremble, his hands tightening into fists. _No._ It couldn't be like this. They had been fighting, they had achieved God Tier… They were supposed to _win_. Beat the game and go back to their ordinary lives — the ones they had before Sburb had intruded. Maybe it was too much to expect. Well, what _had _they expected?

Not this.

Not total death and destruction.

John didn't know how he had managed to avoid a Heroic Death in the final battle, against the final boss. Maybe….

He looked down at the limp, clammy hand of the now double-deceased Vriska Serket. _Maybe I got lucky._

A lump began to form in his throat. Fighting back tears, he swallowed. It seemed wrong, just leaving them scattered across the battlefield like old toys, long since discarded. It made them seem like nothing more than the universe's playthings.

_Well,_ a voice whispered in the back of his mind. _In the end, aren't we all?_

* * *

It seemed like eternity, gathering the… His friends. John refused to think of them as _bodies_. How long did it take? Days? Weeks? He didn't know. It had felt like an era, but he knew that it in reality, it had only been a few days at most.

Blood mixed with blood. Blue, green, yellow, purple, red… There was too much. There were tears, too. Little beads of liquid glass, dripping down his nose and shattering the way that water did. Dispersing into nothing.

Seeing his friends — lined up in little rows, eyes closed and hands folded on their chests—made grief suddenly hit John like a sledgehammer. Karkat, always so crabby, finally looked at peace. Vriska, for once, looked relaxed and blissful. So did the others. Rose, Terezi, Jade, Dave…

The steady dripping of tears dropped.

Black thorns of fire began to dance along John's body. His skin turned from a pale, sickly peach to an ashen gray. Sadness turned into a broken, twisted anger. Hatred against Bec Noir and the Condesce and Lord English, fury at the game, and pure, unadulterated _rage _against the universe as a whole. This universe, the troll's universe — Every. Damn. Universe.

With a yell that would have terrified even the darkest and bravest of creatures, he ordered the wind to do his bidding. He was the last one left, the last player in all of the damn Incipisphere, and the wind _would_ obey him — because there was only him to obey.

Two large tornadoes, swirling with both the power of the wind itself and lashes of dark energy, began to burrow through the Battlefield.

* * *

He kept coming back.

It just wouldn't stop.

No matter how clever he got, no matter how much blood he lost, no matter how much damage his body sustained, the game wouldn't let him die. Apparently, jumping off of a cliff was neither heroic nor just. Nor was a knife to the jugular. Or a makeshift noose. Or cyanide.

He had tried going up to Bec Noir, or to the Condesce, or Lord English, although he had long since given up on trying to beat the game. They were nowhere to be found. Even the one time that he had managed to find Bec Noir, he had just come back in the same flash of light. No matter how he died, it would never be just or heroic. It would always be some form of suicide.

After countless attempts on his own life, John started to change. His skin slowly became a mottle purple-blue. It was harder for him to speak (not that there was anyone to speak to). His limbs no longer felt like arms and legs. John no longer looked human, but he did not know and he did not care.

The whispers grew louder and more numerous. They called from the Furthest Ring, cajoling him with sweet release and freedom from the burden, liberty from the pain. It was tempting, oh so tempting, but some part of his mind fought back, saying "_Your friends would be horrified if they saw what you had become._"

_You'll see your friends again, _the voices said. _In the dream bubbles, they will be waiting. They will be overjoyed to see you, regardless of what you have supposedly become. All you have to do is follow us._

The voices grew more persistent, trying to persuade him into joining him. John tried to ignore him, but his resolve was shrinking. Hell, he didn't even know if the voices were real or not. It could just be his own fevered, desperate imagination.

After all, John had gone off of the deep end in every way imaginable, and he knew it.

* * *

He just wouldn't die. He _couldn't _die. It was impossible for him to find peace.

No matter what, he just. Kept. Coming. Back.

* * *

The remains of John Egbert raised what used to be an arm in the air. It opened its mouth, saying garbled things that barely resembled words but could just be recognized.

"Take me."

It began to dissolve into a steady stream of green code. _0110011101101111011011100110 0101._ It was deconstructed in seconds and reconstructed in another place, in a different form.

A new Horrorterror was created that day.

It was purple-blue and it visited the dream bubbles often.

* * *

**A/N: Well, that was fun.**

**Based off of a Tumblr theory that the horrorterrors are actually the mutated remains of God Tier players from failed sessions. **

**Cheerful stuff.**

**Hope you enjoyed! :D**

**-Jo**


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